Why Music may Fail to Stir Emotion: Study

For most of us, music is emotional. In other words, we can't help but listen to a classic without shedding a tear or wanting to dance in place. Yet for some, this simply doesn't happen. There's just no feeling attached to the beat or lyrics of their favorite song. 

A recent study conducted by researchers at the University of Barcelona and Catalonia's Bellvitge Institute of Biological Investigation set out to investigate why some people just can't seem to get their everyday enjoyment out of music. Researchers determined that they may be suffering from what's scientifically referred to as specific musical anhedonia.

"We wanted to look at music because its something that exists across cultures and doesn't have a biological function," study author Josep Marco, via The Local.   "Music is also something instinctual, and very direct, and it's often assumed that everyone actually likes music. But we wanted to find out if that was actually true." 

For the study, researchers firsed used a web questionnaire in order to identify people who might have lacked various feelings for certain types of music.

Study participants were asked to listen to music chosen by other university students, including Puccini's Nessun Dorma, the theme song from the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and the Four Seasons of Vivaldi.

During this time, participants were also asked to press a button if they liked a piece, didn't like a piece or had no feeling towards the music.

"We found that some people didn't respond at all to the music," Marco said, via The Local.

Next, researchers examined the neural reward systems of those who did not respond emotionally to music at all. However, separate findings regarding an experiment on earning money showed that their brain functioning was normal. With researchers estimating that approximately 1 to 5 people suffer from specific musical anhedonia, they estimate that more findings could help to determine how the brain's reward system separates its own areas for music.

"The identification of these individuals could be very important to understanding the neural basis of music - that is, to understand how a set of notes (is) translated into emotions," Marco said in a separate statement, according to the organization.

However, researchers also stress that this is not an illness that needs to be fixed.

More information regarding the study can be found via the journal Current Biology.